I did judge? Who?
Letter 25
September 18, 2004
* * *
Dear Mrs. Stemke,
You may not remember me. I was in your homeroom in seventh grade.
Listen. I had an obsession with your breasts, and so I couldn't concentrate on social studies. This was before my conscious understanding of sexual attraction. You wore very silky dresses. I could hear them husk over your bottom when you walked, which did something to me I didn't understand. Do you love your husband?
Listen. I broke into your garage when I was in seventh grade. Your husband had a lot of tires in there. Or maybe that was your tire pile. Who knows? All those silky dresses don't seem to match up to a lady who'd own a big pile of tires. Once in there, in your garage, I had no idea what to do—I think I wanted to play with your stockings. But you didn't have any stockings (or underpants or dresses) in your garage, just tires and cases of soda. I stole a case of Fresca from the corner, which I drank in my own garage until I got really ill. I just wanted to say I'm sorry for that.
Jesus. I'm in Amsterdam and I walked through the Red Light District accidentally a few moments ago, and now I know that non-completely-mutually desired sex is not nice, is horrible, as is sexual obsession. I feel so guilty about thinking about you the way I did and wanting to steal your stockings. I am so sorry.
Enclosed you'll find a twenty-dollar bill, which I hope will cover for the damages (Fresca-related and emotional).
T. Rimberg
Letter 26
September 18, 2004
* * *
Dear Madonna,
In 1986 you caused me to have an erection that lasted eight days. I thought I'd have to be hospitalized—it hurt me terribly.
You made your bazillions turning sixteen-year-old boys into sex addicts. You taught my classmates to dress like prostitutes, which only made my sex addiction worse. You're not the only one, of course. But you were the best, and your legacy is amazing. Look at the horrifying little pop singers you helped spawn. Their music is all about vibrating sex organs. I have twin nine-year-old daughters.
Just thought you should know I'm going to kill myself.
Sincerely,
T. Rimberg
Letter 27
September 19, just after 1 a.m. local
* * *
Hey Chels,
Shrooms taste terrible but okay with a Coke. I love Coke. What a product. It is a perfect refreshing drink, except for what cane worker in Haiti paid with his back for this sugar? It is delicious. But I can't help to think I'm drinking the blood of Haitians who die for Coca-Cola Co. I went to dinner with Kaatje and Cranberry, and Kaatje told me the Indonesians who served us food are victims of capitalist oppression. They make delicious food. Haitians who die for Coca-Cola? It is absurd. Everything must be built and there are designers and there are those who build and there are those whose function it is to extract the raw materials from the ground, and these laborers are paid for their labor, which provides them with a little spending money but not enough to buy a Coca-Cola, the most delicious drink in the universe.
You are not made impure by colonial oppression, capitalist logic. You are you, in the now and not trapped by history, like I am. Do you know why I'm here? My father. But you are sweet like Coca-Cola. Your blood is red like this little red label on this little glass bottle. Who makes these bottles? They are so beautiful and cool when pressed against my forehead. You are like sweet Coca-Cola and the cool feeling of this bottle on my forehead. I'm going to put you on my forehead again now. Now I am going to drink you from this bottle. I am so turned on I can hear bells ringing in my ears. There might be bells ringing? There are some church bells ringing. I'm going to go to church, Chels. I love you and I am drinking you.
Day Seven:
Transcript 6
* * *
So don't go thinking the Red Light District changed me in any fundamental way. Didn't stop me from getting all sexy about Chelsea, who was my girlfriend when I was married, did it?
No. I couldn't shut up. I was sort of manic.
Okay, very manic.
Read the next one. The shit hit the fan, Father Barry.
Letter 28
September 19, 2004
* * *
Chelsea,
I am thirty-five years old.
When we were together, I was thirty-three and almost thirty-four. Before we were together, I felt too old to go to a bar, thought it was wrong to go to a bar at thirty-three. There was no doubt about something else: I would never kiss another woman other than my wife. To do so would be wrong. I would go to the mall at lunch and have a coffee in the mall and look at women walking past, pushing strollers, talking on cell phones, and sometimes I would be attracted to them, and then I'd go home and help with dishes, and I would never kiss another woman. That is right and I wanted to be right. Do you think I would take drugs? I had it reined in, Chelsea.
I would not have taken drugs: no pot, no mushrooms.
I lived right but felt wrong. Never felt right. What is right?
It occurred to me, early this morning, while I was tripping on mushrooms: I think God hates me, because I've stopped obeying rules. And I think God loves me, because I've stopped obeying rules that keep me from killing myself, which is what I want to do. Then I think God hates me, because I stopped obeying rules completely only when I decided to kill myself. But then God must love me, because I love Chelsea and it wasn't about sex, it wasn't about physical gratification. I made a choice, used my free will not to buy a large truck or a speedboat or a freezer in which to store meats, not to go to strip clubs, which is wrong, but to kiss the woman I love completely. But I was not courageous enough to actually make a change in my life, so I didn't really make a choice, so God must hate me.
I heard bells. I understood the bells were ringing because of an incredible religious festival going on, even though it was late at night or early, early morning. I knew it was happening. There were people packing the streets in a reverie, and I knew something big and religious and important was going down. Light filled the sky, coloring the sky, twisting in the sky. The bells rang. Through the winding streets, in and out of alleys and between moving trams and speeding bicycles, I chased the sound of the bells. And I could tell I was getting closer, because the ringing became louder and louder, and people in the street moved to the rhythm of these ringing bells, were inspired by the bells, the big dance of life. And I walked and walked and walked and then got back to the bar where I started. Confused, and maybe desperate, I asked people where the bells were coming from, and most shoved me away, and some told me there were no bells, which I couldn't believe, because I could hear them ringing so clearly and then frantically, like they were warning of an air raid, but all the people told me no bells or get away and then I remembered: drugs. I am escaping reality. Not understanding. Escaping the earth to have a spiritual experience.
What if everything is made up, Chelsea? What if cities and governments and businesses and museums and bicycles are not perfect, not perfectible, not that Aristotelean perfect possibility, because there is no such thing as perfect, nothing God made, no God? What if everything is an accretion of human learning simply in existence because its function pleased someone like me, a completely flawed jerk?
What if there is no truth? No right path? What if everything is random?
Then I am no sinner, because there is no sin.
And if there is no sin, then the Nazis were not sinners. Hitler convinced a whole country to serve an ideology. A whole country became a murdering machine. But it was just a machine. It was just an invention like everything else. Not right or wrong. Chelsea, oh no. That can't be.
I'm lost. I'm here for my dad, not to take drugs. I'm alone. I'm here to find out what happened to my father. But what if it doesn't matter, Dad doesn't matter, because there is no God and everything is made up, there is no truth?
Chelsea. Please.
Letter 29
; September 19, 2004
* * *
Dear Anne Frank,
I took a ride on a canal late this morning, here in Amsterdam. I was asleep for most of it, because I had a very difficult night, no thanks to me. (I took drugs and walked around like an idiot talking about the purity of pure love, which led me to stop believing in God.) I slept on that canal boat, with the lolling waves and the noise of the engine. But I woke up at the moment we passed your house, or at least the house where you hid until the Nazis came and hauled you away. Most of my family got hauled away, too. Maybe you knew them in Auschwitz. They were from Belgium. That's close to Holland. I'm not really Jewish (German mother—my family is culpable on that side).
Anne, Anne. I have daughters, and I would kill anyone who would harm them. I harm them.
Anne, Anne. I know that photo. I think it's a still from a film where you were looking out the window of your parents' apartment, tiny girl, looking down on the street at a wedding party, smiling, so beautiful. I wish you would've lived.
Anne, I went to an Indonesian restaurant before I took drugs. It's called Tempo Doeloe. The Indonesians are so nice. They smile and bring plate after plate filled with food. I wish you were in your seventies, elderly, eating in that restaurant, loving the beautiful service and the wonderful food.
But Anne, are the Indonesians victims, too? I've been told by Kaatje, whom you don't know, that they are victims. I suppose they are victims, if there is such a thing as a victim. Who isn't a victim? Me. I victimize, but not because I want to. Except I choose to, so maybe I want to. I am without intent to hurt my family, but I will and have hurt them. And the Indonesians bring wine, Anne. Not bad wine. Then I slept on the canal boat because I was on drugs last night. I'm sorry.
The Indonesians are in Holland because the Dutch invaded their country a long time ago. Dutch culture was perpetrated on them (if perpetration is possible, given that I'm not quite sure anything is real). And they cook very well but are displaced. I wish you had been displaced. I wish you had fled, a refugee. I wish you were an old lady in your adopted home, Queens, New York, an anonymous old lady, sweet and fat, living among Koreans and Russians, all displaced, but alive and maybe mostly happy. You were left behind and you died, a little brilliant girl, for no reason. I don't understand why these Indonesians are so happy to be serving food to the Dutch. Except they weren't left behind in the way you were. They are lucky.
Anne, I woke up at your house and I am empty and sad, and I miss my mother and my wife and my children and their excellent little friends who played in our backyard, like you should've played, and I'm here chasing my Jewish father who did not die in the war, when he might have, and I feel terrible guilt, like my father must have felt guilt for so many dead when he wasn't dead, and I miss my butler, who is not my son, and I miss being with my love, like you were with that boy Peter, remember that crush you had? I recognize that crush, your crush in the middle of the occupation, you told it so beautifully, so well, such a genius girl.
Anne. You mean a lot to me right now. You are proof there is beauty and right and wrong. What happened to you can't be anything but wrong.
I'm sorry, Anne.
Sincerely,
T. Rimberg
Day Seven:
Transcript 7
* * *
No more God.
Yes right and wrong . . . sort of. No more God.
I was changed, Barry. That night changed me. Writing Anne Frank changed me. Oh, but I was a changed man!
I'm not enjoying this today.
Okay. Before that stupid drug trip, I assumed—without thinking about it—there is “right” and “wrong” writ large, that there's an organizing principle that I don't make up. That exists. God's truth, or whatever. But what God? Not God! From humans! Learned!
I'm trying to explain.
Okay. My life was filled with regret for making “wrong” choices. Wrong implies the opposite, too: that there is a right.
Bingo. I figured that wrong and right is just a proxy for—you know—personally pleasant and unpleasant. And one man's pleasant is another's unpleasant.
Nazis find a world with no Jews pleasant. Jews don't agree. Because there were more Nazis in Germany than there were Jews, it became “truth” that the world would be better without Jews. That's not truth. That's a popularity contest that Jews lose big-time. But try telling the Nazis it isn't the truth. Nazis created the truth in Germany.
If there is no truth, there is no God, in the way I conceived God, and my actions don't matter—or at least . . . who should care about my actions? People should mind their own business. The damn truth is I was sort of religious or at least a believer. Before. I believed in big truths. But not after Amsterdam.
You're right . . . you're right . . . there was more to the change . . . from the Anne Frank letter. I took responsibility for making truth . . . I determined my own truth . . . through interacting with the world . . . because Anne was a person like me and I find people . . . most people to be decent and sweet . . . what happened to Anne was horrible . . . I was muddled. I'm tired, Barry.
Yes, it's in my journal. The little girl in my dreams reminded me of Anne Frank.
My whole demeanor changed after that. I stopped acting crazy.
I'm very tired.
Journal Entry,
September 19, 2004
* * *
I don't need to go to Antwerp.
Antwerp, Belgium, because you think your father is there, because of stupid pictures of there. He is not there. He has already willed you money, because he is dead. Do you need to honor him by going? Do you need to figure out the truth? No. Remember when he came into your bedroom and woke you and whispered, “Theodore. I am not coming home again. This is not because of you.” Remember hugging his neck and crying and the smell of aftershave, like he just shaved in the middle of the night? His neck and his aftershave. He smelled like your father. He was your father. He left you, which was wrong, because it hurt you, and you don't need to forgive him, and you don't need to find him.
Letter 30
September 20, 2004
* * *
Dear Chelsea,
This is it. I won't write to you again.
You could be with me. I'm not bound by marriage. It doesn't matter.
I'm leaving Amsterdam (and you).
This is goodbye.
T.
Day Seven:
Transcript 8
* * *
I went to Paris, yes. Why not?
Not okay. I'm sick.
CNN?
No. I don't want to be interviewed, Barry.
Thank you.
Journal Entry,
September 22, 2004, Still Amsterdam
* * *
This morning, you lay in bed, thinking that this would be the day. No overdosing—swim into the North Sea.
Last night again filled with war dreams, death dreams, fleeing families gunned down. Watched them like movies. No reaction. The same images played over and over. Kids dragging suitcases. Parents dragging kids. Old people stumbling and beaten. Then claps of sound, collapse, pools of blood. That's the way it is.
It's time to swim into the North Sea.
But then a call from the lobby.
Cranberry wants to meet for a beer. You say no.
Cranberry says Kaatje wants to speak. You say no.
Kaatje on the phone says her grandfather killed himself, but he had lung cancer and was surrounded by family.
They come to your room. They roll away your suitcase. And then the street and past people on feet and all those slow bikers and phallic symbols commemorating the war dead and then to the train.
This is not how you planned it. A high-speed train to Paris, flying past Antwerp. It's fine to say goodbye in Paris.
Day Eight:
Transcript 1
* * *
Guess what happened to me this morning! Wait. Are you recording already?
The letters on the train
? I was saying goodbye.
I want to tell you what happened.
Okay. Read the letters to me.
Letter 31
September 23, 2004
* * *
Dear David,
I'm on my way to Paris today. I've always been hard on you. I always thought you were not a nice person. Maybe you're not a nice person or maybe I never gave you a chance. I'm sorry regardless.
T.
Letter 32
September 23, 2004
* * *
Dear Mary,
Paris was good to us in 1994. Remember the orange sky? That hot wind that blew your hair across my face? Your parents were sweet to take Charlie for the week. We were twenty-four years old and already had an eighteen-month-old kid. Amazing to have that joy and responsibility and terror so young.
Remember the lights on boats and bridges, the Seine? And we kissed up there, like a couple of star-struck Americans, which we were, ridiculous . . . except, the Eiffel Tower is all that. It is not a disappointment. It is beautiful, impossible, so authentic, even though it is a tourist trap. I loved being with you there on an orange Paris night. It is a powerful memory. You were pregnant with our girls.
The Miracle Letters of T. Rimberg Page 10
